Publications and Reports
Report #1
Bay Area teens aren't using AI to cheat, don't trust their own eyes online, and are exhausted for reasons screen time can't explain.
Report #2
Among Bay Area high school students, advantage does not remove the weight of growing up. It changes what the weight is made of. Less- resourced students carry financial dread and a sense that AI is costing them their learning. Their more privileged classmates carry something else: the conviction that whatever they are doing, it is not enough.
Report #3
Before most of them have earned a paycheck, Bay Area high school students have been pitched dropshipping, sports betting, options trading, and crypto by the people they follow. Nearly half say the pitch worked on them at least a little. One in seven acted. And the students most likely to trust the shortcut are the ones who have stopped believing the long way works.
The Kokosing Youth Futures Project is an original, youth-led survey examining how high school students in the San Francisco Bay Area experience emerging technology, academic pressure, digital media, and economic uncertainty. Drawing on responses from 310 students across private and public schools, the project explores how adolescents use generative AI in learning, navigate social media environments, assess institutional trust, and make sense of career expectations in a rapidly changing economy.
The findings reveal a generation of cautious early adopters: students widely use AI as a learning support rather than a substitute, express ambivalence about automation, and report significant emotional strain tied to online comparison and performance culture. Despite high confidence in digital and media literacy, many students describe gaps between perceived competence and lived experience, alongside persistent economic anxiety, even within an affluent sample. Together, the project offers a grounded, data-driven portrait of youth navigating opportunity and pressure in a digitally saturated environment.